Fuck Yeah Daenerys Targaryen

So, Game of Thrones eh? The Bear and I have just rocketed through the first series in a matter of days and have now joined the hordes of beleagured fans waiting impatiently for the next season. Although it's a bit confusing, (e.g. Hang on, who were their parents? So, who's after dying? Wait, that's her BROTHER? That dirty BITCH!) it's also riveting and bloody and sexy and brilliant. As Trace Dogg so cleverly put it, "it's like Lord of the Rings but set in a brothel 48% of the time". There's many a character I want to punch in the face, due to them being such complete and utter BASTARDS all the time. However, there are also fantastically likeable characters such as diminutive chancer and charmer Tyrion Lannister, fiesty nine year old tomboy Arya Stark and my definite favorite (and flipping nightmare to spell) Daenerys Targaryen.


Aside from being the ethereal, silver-haired and otherworldly RIDEBAG that she is, I seriously loved her transition from fragile, subservient bride, taking shit from her dickhead brother, powerless to stop the events determining the course of her life, to kickass, fearsome tribal queen, taking no shit from nobody, as it were.

Are yeh startin'?

She's also well able to rock an ensemble that looks like it was made out of some manner of potato sack as well as she rocks flowing silky maxi dresses, a rather impressive feat, I'm sure you'll agree.


So she's ridiculously gorgeous, a fierce (in both the Tyra and regular sense) queen, has a killer wardrobe to boot and ALSO has a trusty troupe of sexy handmaidens for backup. One of whom is rather well versed in the art of fucking and with a quick spot of educational dry humping, instructs lovely Daenerys how to cowgirl-shag her way to authority. Handy handmaidens indeed.

Handmaidens....ASSEMBLE!

I won't go into the other reasons that she's the silvery bomb, as it would mean enormous spoilers for those of you who may not have seen it yet, but she's one ferociously badass lady and I can't believe I have to wait as long as I do for them to hurry the fuck up and make the second series.

You Got It Wrong

A few weeks ago I was delighted to be asked by Billy Flag to design an EP cover for The Dead Flags. Seeing as I had so much fun designing one for EleventyFour not so long ago, I jumped at the chance. The band wanted something a bit Hitchcock, a bit Saul Bass and a bit retro in style. After a few listens to the tracks I zeroed in on the idea of using hands in the design, as each song is linked by references to either hands, touching or holding. And here's what the result was:


The finished CD case is a much brighter blue than the photo suggests (empty cider cans from last night's Presidential debate drinking game are just about out of shot) and I'm really happy with how it turned out. The EP features the bouncy, fifties rock 'n roll-tinged title track You Got It Wrong, the supremely sing-a-long-able What's It All About and a terrific funk-drenched remix of Let's Start A Fire Tonight by electro sexfunk overlord Jack Samson.

It's already been clocking up mighty favourable reviews on Pop Culture Monster, Boob.ie and MutantSpace, but don't just take their collective words for it, come along to the launch gig in Whelan's on the 26th of October! If you click attending on the Facebook event page here you'll even get a discount on the admission price and you can hardly say fairer than that now, can you? Head over to their website for more tour dates and a listen to the tracks. They're a tremendously fun live band and I for one will be found in Whelan's on the 26th, drinking on a school night and dancing my socks off.

Stormageddon Style

During last week's episode of Doctor Who, while the Doctor and James Corden were dashing around the place dodging Cybermen, I noticed that baby Alfie (or Stormageddon for fellow nerds) had superb taste in rainwear. For a character who didn't utter a word, he managed to steal the show entirely thanks to the Doctor's ability to speak Baby and a dynamite choice of coat.

Baby Alfie working that star pattern.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that I happen to own what is essentially THAT VERY COAT myself.

Me acting the maggot in my Dunnes raincoat after a bellyful of Odessa french toast.

You see what's happened here is that Alfie liked the look of my coat and got his own version, it's not that I dress like a giant baby. Just so's we're clear.

Moisture Is The Essence Of Wetness

When I hear the word mermaid, I pretty much automatically think of Disney's irrepressibly cute Ariel, representing for redheads in their twinkly canon of princesses.


While the original shell bikini-ed Ariel is lovely and all that, there are two non-movie incarnations of her that I really love. One is from a Disney campaign shot by Annie Leibovitz which casts Julianne Moore as the underwater princess, all ethereal and pale skinned with flowing red hair.


The other is a decidedly saucier version, in which artist J Scott Campbell re-imagines her as a devastatingly sexy aquatic temptress with a set of knockers that must be damn near impossible to submerge.

I keep expecting the ship in the background to tip over from the sheer force of her outrageous rideyness.

I quite like it when mermaids appear in popular culture, where they seem to either be unfeasible love interests or enticing predators. Most recently they were featured in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Darryl Hannah flopped her tail fins around in Splash! and both Sade and Lady Gaga have put in turns as lovelorn mermaids in their music videos.

Larry: I just thank the Lord she didn't live to see her son as a mermaid.
Derek: Mer-man! (Black Lung cough) Mer-MAN!

Anyway, what prompted me to fish out (Haha! Oh COME ON, it had to happen sooner or later) pictures of foxy sea dwelling ladies in the first place was cinema's first mermaid, Annette Kellerman.


Annette was an Australian swimmer, high diver, stuntwoman, model and star of vaudeville and film who revolutionised women's swimwear and invented synchronised swimming too while she was at it. In the early 1900s, women were expected to wear woollen dresses and pantaloons while swimming, all in order to protect their collective modesty. *shakes fist at patriarchy* Annette, a world-class swimmer, was having none of that stupidity and fashioned her own swimming costume by sewing stockings onto a men's racing swimsuit. Take that, squares!

That saucy wench, flashing her KNEES! Someone think of the children!

However, one day in 1907 she was swimming at a beach in Boston wearing one of her fitted one piece suits without the leg coverings and was promptly arrested for indecency.

I love that she's making it as awkward as possible for that jerk to bundle her into the paddywagon.

Undeterred, she went on to create her own line of women's swimming costumes, encouraging ladies swamped in layers everywhere to ditch the stupid woolly sailor dresses and go for a one piece that they could actually move around in, paving the way for modern swimwear. She became a major film star, appearing in many underwater adventure movies as a mermaid, designing her own costumes and developing the first swimmable mermaid outfit for camera. She was also the first well-known actress to do a fully nude scene in 1916's A Daughter of the Gods.


As if all that wasn't enough, she also wrote several books on swimming and beauty, a book of children's fairy tales and opened a health food shop in Long Beach, California. Considering all Ariel managed to do was catch a touch of laryngitis and marry Prince Eric, I think it's safe to say I have a new favourite mermaid.

Quelque Chose #14

 
Random Fact: In the mid-seventies, a teenage Michelle Pfeiffer worked in Disneyland, playing Alice in Wonderland in one of the park's many parades.

(via Mental Floss) 
 

Truly Truly Truly Outrageous

One of my more recent charity shop finds and one that I was particularly delighted with was a VHS tape in a battered case with a special offer sticker from days gone by half peeled away. But not just any tape, for this was in fact the all-singing all-dancing ninety minute extravaganza that is the first five episodes of Jem. Girls born in the Eighties, brace yourselves.
 

I watched it on Saturday afternoon and can confirm that it is exactly as cheesy, sparkly, demented and brilliant as I hoped it would be. It was a bucket of glittery nostalgia being thrown in my face, interspersed with one minute music video segments and I LOVED it. The outfits are bitchin', the hair is enormous and multicoloured, the pop songs are insanely catchy and the storylines are utterly bonkers. Just to recap, Jerrica (Jerrica? Seriously? Not even a real name) Benton's father dies and she inherits half of his record company and a house full of orphaned girls. As you do. She then receives a mysterious gift of earrings that lead her to a supercomputer called Synergy, designed by her late father. The computer can project holograms and transforms Jerrica into pink-haired pop sensation Jem.

Look at the SIZE of that hair! The sheer weight alone would be enough to snap any normal person's neck.

Jerrica's makeover and an evil music executive trying to take over the company then results in the formation of Jem and the Holograms, comprised of Jerrica's redhead sister, the Eighties-tastically named Kimber (who doesn't seem to mind that her dad left her fuck all in the will) on keyboards and their friends, blue-haired guitarist Aja (who I thought was Eastern European from her accent but is actually supposed to be Asian) and purple-haired Shana (who immediately hooks up with the only other black character in the show) on synth drums. Synth. Drums.


The rival band in the show, and the one I remember best from my childhood are The Misfits. They're the punky, brazen and mean counterparts to Jem and her do-gooder Holograms, led by the perpetually snarling and scheming green-haired frontwoman Pizzazz. The rest of the band is made up of white-haired bassist bitch Roxy (who seems to display slightly sociopathic tendencies, as she very nearly steamrollers Jem and the Holograms to death just for the hell of it at one point) and my favourite character from when I used to watch it, blue-haired keytar player (KEYTAR!) Stormer, who is actually the only nice member of the Misfits. Although watching it as an adult, I realised that she's actually a total pushover and could do with copping the fuck on and not putting up with Pizzazz and Roxy's bossy bullshit.


The Misfits were my strongest memory from the show, which may be partly due to their magnificent entrance in the first episode. They smash into the record company office on not-at-all-unwieldy GIANT GUITAR MOTORBIKES and threateningly circle Jerrica, bursting into their first song. Incidentally, their songs are far better than those of the Holograms. While Jem's numbers simper over love and friendship, the Misfits sing about causing trouble, winning at all costs and other assorted divilment. The music videos in the show seem to provide either an opportunity for a montage or even better, actually just reuse footage from previous episodes and videos, often completely irrelevant but shoehorned in nonetheless in what had to be cost saving measures. Needless to say, eight year old me didn't notice at the time. Twenty seven year old me was most amused by it all.

Giant guitar bikes. The only way to travel.

An aspect of the show that seemed to go over my head as a child is the love triangle storyline between Jerrica, her boyfriend Rio and Jem. Winning the award for most oblivious boyfriend ever, Rio has no idea that Jem and Jerrica are the same person, even though the only difference is their hair and a bit of pink facepaint. However, he seems happy enough to cheat on his girlfriend with...eh...his girlfriend in disguise, shifting the face off Jem at every given opportunity. Which isn't really cheating at all, but HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT. If he'd just get his dopey horn under control for all of five minutes he might realise that his beloved Jerrica is inflicting the biggest mindfuck of all time on him.


Anyway, once I had finished the video and was searching the internet for pictures for this post, I realised that there were TONNES of episodes I had never seen. Later into the series there were even new band members added to both the Holograms and the Misfits. Raya, a Latina drummer temporarily replaced Shana, who later rejoined the band and Jetta, an obnoxious Brit sax player with a brilliant Adam Ant style lightning bolt across her forehead was added to the Misfits line-up.


And, AND as if that wasn't enough of a surprise (for me anyway) there was A WHOLE NEW BAND introduced to the series in the form of The Stingers (supposedly based on German metal band The Scorpions), led by frontman Riot with a head of hair that would outgay both Siegfried and Roy, accompanied by Aryan hotties Rapture and Minx.


BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! At one point Kimber and Stormer, both feeling unappreciated, temporarily leave their respective bands, record an album together and embark on a tender and exploratory love affair. Alright fine, I made up that last bit but that would have been an amazing storyline.

I don't know about you, but the picture on the left screams "INTENSE SEXY LADY LOVE!" to me anyway.

Other new developments to me include Clash, a Misfits groupie and henchwoman with bloody MARVELLOUS hair who uses disguises to sabotage whatever Jem and the Holograms happen to be up to at the time.


There's an 11 disc Jem boxset due to be released in October, which I'll be most unsubtly dropping hints about in the run up to the C word. (Christmas, not cunt. In case you were wondering.) But for now, I'll leave you with some shots of the outrageously ferocious Eighties explosion that is the fashion from the series. Leggings and side-ponytails a go-go!

To Boldly Dress

Last week marked the 45th anniversary of Star Trek and as such, last Friday night, I experienced what was undoubtedly the nerdiest evening of my entire life. To honour the occasion, a screening of The Wrath of Khan was planned, with the film projected on to a bare wall in Billy Flag and Jack Samson's Rathmines apartment, which as it happens is one of the best ways to watch a film ever. I say it was a nerdfest of an evening, but obviously that also means that it was a huge amount of fun. The main event was preceded by an episode of Deep Space 9 and an episode of the original series. The DS9 episode was one that saw the crew go back in time in order to infiltrate the Kirk-era Enterprise and featured the character of Dax giving herself a sixties Starfleet makeover in order to blend in. When she emerged in her red Mary Quant style minidress and shiny beehive, EleventyFour turned to me and said "That's going to turn up on your blog, isn't it". And GUESS WHAT….she was RIGHT! She knows me so well.

I've actually written about Star Trek once before on this blog, and have posted about sci-fi fashion over on Blaubushka, when I looked at the shiny dresses of Forbidden Planet, but this post is all about the wondrous wardrobes of the women from the original Star Trek series. For example, the most famous wearer of said red minidress, Lieutenant Uhura. There may have been a constant threat of ass cheek, but if anyone could rock it, it was she.


Anyway, the other episode we watched before KHAAAAN! was the one in which, as Jack Samson puts it, "Spock is so horny he might die". This particular episode also features the enchanting T'Pring, a Vulcan bird that Spock was betrothed to when they were both children, but in a fit of wagonry (I may have just made that word up, but you know what I mean) has decided she'd rather hook up with Kirk. All this is beside the point though, as I think my mouth fell open every time she was on screen. She's utterly GORGEOUS and sparkly and lovely and…just look at her for Jaysus sake, she's amazing. Kind of a bitch, yes, but amazing.

The hair! The clothes! The FACE!

Of course, enthralling as T'Pring and her outfit were, the series had its fair share of dodgy wardrobe choices, not least those of Andrea the Android and her criss-crossed mostly-not-there bodysuit, Shahna the stern, green haired gladiator trainer in her silver nappy and the tin-foiled state of this random blonde slave girl.


Speaking of slave girls, there were also green skinned Orion Slave Girls who appeared in the original series, all bouffant hair and looking like an alien version of Goldie Hawn when she used to appear on that 1960s sketch show. They also popped up in an episode of The Next Generation, however this time around they were updated and dropping it like it's hot as if they were the Verdigris Pussycat Dolls.


In fairness to Star Trek's costume department though, the ladies weren't always nearly naked, and oftentimes their more modest outfits were properly gorgeous, such as Dr. Miranda Jones and her cool beaded dresses (one of which was displayed in the Smithsonian as part of their Star Trek exhibit), finished off with a weird but cute topknot.


Former Catwoman Lee Merriwether also lucked out when she appeared on the show as Losira in a deadly purple cutout dress and utterly awesome eye makeup that totally reminds me of sweets from the 90s like Fruit Salads and Drumsticks.


Finally, one of my favourite Star Trek looks belongs to warrior woman Nona who, apart from being ridiculously beautiful, looked astounding in black leather, bright orange fur like she's just been Muppet-hunting and a Native American style necklace, finished off with sparkles on her face. GLORIOUS.


However, for every superb costume, there's a horrendous one too. While Nona's outfit used brightly coloured fur in a tremendous way, the following picture illustrates the exact opposite of that.


Step away from the Fraggle showgirls, McCoy. Just. Step. Away.

Gotham City Girls

When Eli Mordino pointed out earlier today on Twitter that the Joker in the poster for the upcoming Batman Live stage show was channeling a serious Caesar Romero vibe, it reminded me that I had been meaning to investigate Catwoman's costume for the same event. You're probably aware by now that I'm pretty gay for this particular slinky villain, what with the big rambling post I've previously written, which detailed all her different incarnations since her first appearance. So naturally, I had to know what this production went for, especially after being so very underwhelmed by the recent image of Anne Hathaway's costume from The Dark Knight Rises.

Ehh, Anne, I don't know if you realise this, but your costume is seriously lacking a pair of kitty ears and y'know, A GENERAL AIR OF AWESOMENESS.

However, I was rather glad to see that the live tour has gone for the current comic book outfit of a shiny black catsuit and a pair of feline goggles, giving the look a tiny tasty lick of steampunk.

While I was happy enough with Catwoman, I'm not quite sold on Poison Ivy's costume, in that she looks more like a vaguely garden-themed stripper rather than an alluring, albeit demented scientist/eco-terrorist with dominion over all plant life.

That being said, however nonplussed I might have been with Poison Ivy, the absolute STATE they made of Harley Quinn's costume is nothing short of disastrous. Allow me to remind you how brilliant and amazing and kickass Harley Quinn usually looks.

Now, have a look at the manky, monstrous, Pippi Longstocking-runs-away-with-the-circus atrocity they've inflicted on her for the live show:

I hate the pigtails, I hate the stupid skirt and I hate that she's not all red and black or wearing her jester hat. In essence, I've got a bag full of NO especially reserved for this thing. Just...no. NO!